Oh Yeah, I’m Done.

Hallelujah, it’ll be over soon. What, you say?

I was going to start this post with some sort of clever reference to solubility, saturation and precipitate in a solution and tie it in to how I finally reached my limit of tolerance here at work last week… Sadly, my clever-muse laughed that off and told me to give up trying to be smart and just write.

So I’ll just say it. I finally resigned.  I left an (early) patient waiting in the lobby, printed my resignation, walked over to another building, threw it at handed it to my manager and walked away.  It’s been a week and I regret nothing (she says in thickly accented French, standing on the pyre about to be lit).

I returned from my beautiful Thailand vacation exactly a month ago, and dove straight back into work – except that somewhat miraculously overnight I had no assistant/technician for 5 weeks but double the patient load I’ve had for the last 8 months.  Don’t get me started on the decision making paradigms here, it will just hurt your brain like it’s tortured mine for almost five years.

*No this isn’t why I quit, or I would have done so any of the other hundred times something like that occured*

Last week I was privileged to overhear a very nasty, inaccurate and unearned after-hours bitch session about me in the next room by colleagues who didn’t realize (or care) that I could hear, or that most of what they accused me of was not only illogical and uncharacteristic of me, but literally impossible.

*No that’s not why I quit, it’s just a confirmation of my paranoia symptom of the dysfunction *

The next day after our managers business meeting I received an afternoon of bullying emails from a subordinate secretary who (so far as I can decipher from the available evidence and behaviors) presented my idea as not mine in the meeting and then pushed to have me censured for not putting all work through my supervisor (which I always do).  From what I can tell my manager has no knowledge that the bright idea approved by him in this meeting came from the same highly experienced senior clinician (me) who was for all intents and purposes secretly punished afterward for having the great idea.

Ponder that for a sec…..

*That’s also not why I quit, but frankly that immature behavior is ubiquitous here and in addition to be beneath my notice, it’s beneath me as a person*

I quit because I’m an adult working in a middle school playground, and I’ve had enough.  It’s like the Lord of the Flies up in here, and I don’t want to stay for the end of that book.

Anyway, the afterglow of Thailand lasted about 10 days, which was nice. I’m in the process of crafting a wedding gift for my friends who were married there that will hopefully remind them of their experience, so thankfully I have something creatively stimulating to focus on outside of work. I haven’t put any mental or physical energy into my blog or it’s move to self hosting, simply because of exhaustion.  I just had my first coaching session in 6 weeks, last night.

So yeah, I resigned. It’s been a long time coming.

I received text and email cheers and congratulations from everyone who’s no longer here, with advice not to change my mind or let my employers talk me into staying.

I received,  immediately – and contrary to what I’d feared – encouraging advice, offers and support towards finding my next job, from a few different countries.

I’ve only told a few people at work and each persons reaction has flowed along the lines of what I expected.

My friendly, neutral and easy to work with colleagues have been shocked and sad, asked me not to go and hugged me. These are the folks who’ve made an effort to know and understand me, who aren’t threatened by me, don’t make every interaction an exhausting petty teenage power struggle, and who have learned who I truly am and know they can trust my intentions.

I’ve told one or two patients who have been very upset and said they would call the hospital to insist they keep me here. lol

A very few have ignored me and avoided the subject, likely because they’re thrilled to finally vanquish another imagined foe so as to consolidate their fantasy power base and no longer have to tolerate qualified competition and differing opinions or be forced into cooperation when they’d prefer a dictatorship.

My manager has not spoken to me yet, but I’ve already worked out that conversation.  Thankfully I don’t regret resigning, nor do I have to defend myself. I no longer feel the desire to word vomit a long list of angry complaints, most of which he’s heard a million times with other resigned staff.  No, my strategy is different. I’m going to show him who I am. And how this place screws up by fostering toxic employees and being unaware of the skilled and experienced ones.

It won’t fix anything, because sadly some things never change. Why? Because here, it just won’t. And I no longer care to try to change it.  Five years of banging my head against the wall here is enough.